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Skip to Search Results- 1Afshar, Shima
- 1Aghaie, Ermia
- 1Amani, Mohammad Javad
- 1Amundarain, Jesus
- 1Ansari, Nesma Nasir
- 1Baker, Kathleen E.N.
- 11Xu, Zhenghe (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 5Liu, Qingxia (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 4De Klerk, Arno (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 4Zeng, Hongbo (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 3Gupta, Rajender (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
- 3McCaffrey, William (Chemical and Materials Engineering)
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Probing Challenges of Asphaltenes in Petroleum Production through Extended−SARA (E−SARA) Analysis
DownloadSpring 2019
Asphaltenes are polyaromatic compounds present in crude oils, which are defined as being soluble in aromatic solvents and insoluble in n−alkanes. The partition of self−associated asphaltene aggregates at oil−solid and oil−water interfaces is the root cause of a number of major problems...
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Probing Deformable Oil-Water Interfaces by Atomic Force Microscopy and Cascade Partial Coalescence Measurements
DownloadFall 2016
Phase separation of stable oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions poses major challenges for a variety of industries, including the petroleum industry. The stability and destabilizing of petroleum emulsions highly depend on interfacial properties such as surface/interfacial charges, interfacial...
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Spring 2017
In this research, flocculation of fractionated asphaltenes was studied using dynamic light scattering (DLS). Three asphaltene fractions were obtained based on its adsorption characteristics onto calcium carbonate. The DLS results showed that the irreversibly-adsorbed asphaltenes (Irr-Ads),...
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Probing the Molecular Interactions of Asphaltenes in Organic Solvents Using a Surface Forces Apparatus
DownloadSpring 2014
A fundamental understanding of the stability of water-in-bitumen emulsions stabilized by surface active agents requires a good description of the molecular interactions between the different materials in contact. Of these surface active agents, asphaltenes and oil contaminated fine solids are...
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Protecting Worker Safety in Alberta by Enhancing Hazard Identification and Control for Hazards Associated with Tailings Facilities, Dams, and Systems
DownloadSpring 2019
My research was motivated by a fatality that occurred at an oil sands tailings operation on January 19, 2014, when a worker drowned in an underground cavern which formed under a leaking tailings transport system. At the time of the incident, the organization and workers did not know that ground...
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Pyrolysis of asphaltenes in an atmospheric entrained flow reactor: A study on gasification reactivity and properties of chars
DownloadFall 2014
Solvent deasphalting, followed by asphaltenes gasification, has been recommended as a favorable alternative to coker based upgrading processes. However, very limited work has been carried out on pyrolysis and gasification of asphaltenes, at entrained flow conditions. The present work aims at...
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Fall 2018
There is a growing need to decrease the viscosity of bitumen using minimal diluent addition to reduce the cost of transportation. However, due to the inherently free radical rich nature of bitumen, even on exposure to low autoxidative conditions adverse effects on the viscosity and hardening of...
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Remediation of bitumen-contaminated sand grains: development of a protocol for washing performance evaluation
DownloadSpring 2010
In the development of a non-aqueous bitumen extraction process, a major obstacle is solvent loss due to hydrocarbon attachment to the reject sand grains. A proposed solution to this problem is to wash (i.e. remediate) the oil-contaminated sand grains with water and surfactants. This research is...
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Rheology of Bitumen at the Onset of Asphaltene Aggregation and its Effects on the Stability of Water-in-Oil Emulsion
DownloadFall 2015
Asphaltenes are the heaviest fraction of bitumen. Asphaltenes not only play an important role in the high viscosity of bitumen but also in the water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion stability. Nevertheless, their exact function in the stability mechanism of W/O emulsion still remains unresolved. It is...
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Spring 2016
Non-aqueous extraction technologies are currently being investigated as an alternative to the conventional water based process for extracting bitumen from oil sands. The reduced dependence on fresh water and land for creation of tailing ponds makes non-aqueous technologies a greener alternative....